The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

The previous edition of this now-classic book revealed the existence and subversive manipulations of "economic hit men". John Perkins wrote that economic hit men (EHM) "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder".

And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability

In 2008, the universe of Western finance outgrew planet Earth. When Wall Street imploded, a death embrace between insolvent banks and bankrupt states consumed Europe. Half a dozen national economies imploded, and several more came close. But the storm is far from over.... From the aftermath of the Second World War to the present, Varoufakis recounts how the eurozone emerged not as a route to shared prosperity but as a pyramid scheme of debt.

Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment

In Adults in the Room, Yanis Varoufakis exposes the shocking reality of how power is wielded behind the scenes at the EU - and argues that only radical reform can save it from collapse. Yanis Varoufakis became globally famous when was elected finance minister of Greece with a specific mandate to say no to the EU: to reject the forced loans and crushing austerity forced upon his country by the Eurozone.

Dr Nik Jewell says:"The most interesting political memoir I have read"

The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy

The past 20 years saw unprecedented growth and stability followed by the worst financial crisis the industrialised world has ever witnessed. In the space of little more than a year, what had been seen as the age of wisdom was viewed as the age of foolishness. Almost overnight, belief turned into incredulity. Most accounts of the recent crisis focus on the symptoms and not the underlying causes of what went wrong.

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

This classic expose of the Fed has become one of the best-selling books in its category of all time. Where does money come from? Where does it go? Who makes it? The money magician's secrets are unveiled. Here is a close look at their mirrors and smoke machines, the pulleys, cogs, and wheels that create the grand illusion called money. A boring subject? Just wait. You'll be hooked in five minutes. It reads like a detective story - which it really is, but it's all true.

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history of the organization, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain", from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present.

Dark Money: How a secretive group of billionaires is trying to buy political control in the US

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement.

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis

Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook of The Road to Ruin, written and read by James Rickards. The global economy has made what seems like an incredible comeback after the financial crisis of 2008. Yet this comeback is artificial. Central banks have propped up markets by keeping interest rates low and the supply of money free-flowing. They won't bail us out again next time. And there will be a next time...soon.

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It

Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms, and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City.

The Euro: And Its Threat to the Future of Europe

From Nobel Prize-winning economist and best-selling author Joseph Sitglitz, author of Globalization and Its Discontents, this is the essential audio guide to the future of Europe. Solidarity and prosperity fostered by economic integration: this principle has underpinned the European project from the start, and the establishment of a common currency was supposed to be its most audacious and tangible achievement. Since 2008, however, the European Union has ricocheted between stagnation and crisis.

Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

From Paul Mason, the award-winning Channel 4 presenter, PostCapitalism is a guide to our era of seismic economic change and how we can build a more equal society. Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself has reached its limits.

World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of World Order by Henry Kissinger, read by Nicholas Hormann. World Order is the summation of Henry Kissinger's thinking about history, strategy and statecraft. As if taking a perspective from far above the globe, it examines the great tectonic plates of history and the motivations of nations, explaining the attitudes that states and empires have taken to the rest of the world from the formation of Europe to our own times.

The Origins of Totalitarianism

This classic, definitive account of totalitarianism traces the emergence of modern racism as an "ideological weapon for imperialism", beginning with the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe in the 19th century and continuing through the New Imperialism period from 1884 to World War I.

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.

Imperium

When Tiro, the confidential secretary of a Roman senator, opens the door to a terrified stranger on a cold November morning, he sets in motion a chain of events which will eventually propel his master into one of the most famous courtroom dramas in history. The stranger is a Sicilian, a victim of the island's corrupt Roman governor, Verres. The senator is Cicero, a brilliant young lawyer and spellbinding orator, determined to attain imperium - supreme power in the state.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States.

The Panama Papers: How the World's Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money

Late one evening, investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer receives an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels he then receives documents showing a mysterious bank transfer for $500,000,000 in gold. This is just the beginning. Obermayer and fellow Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Frederik Obermaier find themselves immersed in a secret world where complex networks of shell companies help to hide people who don't want to be found.

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

Based on explosive new evidence, best-selling author David Talbot tells America's greatest untold story: the United States' rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. The book draws on revelatory new materials - including exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles' wife and mistress, newly discovered US government documents, and US and European intelligence sources.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

The sun is setting on the Western world. Slowly but surely, the direction in which the world spins has reversed: where for the last five centuries the globe turned westward on its axis, it now turns to the east.... For centuries, fame and fortune were to be found in the West - in the New World of the Americas. Today it is the East that calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The region stretching from Eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia, deep into China and India, is taking center stage.

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture - can be understood as the result of a few long-term accelerating forces.

Parliament Ltd: A journey to the dark heart of British politics

In Parliament Ltd, investigative journalist Martin Williams reveals the true extent of greed and corruption in Westminster. Containing explosive new revelations about the activities of those at the top, this is a shocking untold tale that goes to the rotten heart of British politics.

Thinking Like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making

Economic forces are everywhere around you. But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon you. Instead, with these 12 fast-moving and crystal clear lectures, you can learn how to use a small handful of basic nuts-and-bolts principles to turn those same forces to your own advantage.

Publisher's Summary

Tower of Basel is the first investigative history of the world’s most secretive global financial institution. Based on extensive archival research in Switzerland, Britain, and the United States, and in-depth interviews with key decision-makers including Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve; Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England; and former senior Bank for International Settlements managers and officials.

Tower of Basel tells the inside story of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): the central bankers’ own bank. Created by the governors of the Bank of England and the Reichsbank in 1930, and protected by an international treaty, the BIS and its assets are legally beyond the reach of any government or jurisdiction. The bank is untouchable.

Swiss authorities have no jurisdiction over the bank or its premises. The BIS has just 140 customers but made tax-free profits of $1.17 billion in 20112012.Since its creation, the bank has been at the heart of global events but has often gone unnoticed. Under Thomas McKittrick, the bank’s American president from 19401946, the BIS was open for business throughout the Second World War. The BIS accepted looted Nazi gold, conducted foreign exchange deals for the Reichsbank, and was used by both the Allies and the Axis powers as a secret contact point to keep the channels of international finance open.

After 1945 the BIS still behind the scenes for decades provided the necessary technical and administrative support for the trans-European currency project, from the first attempts to harmonize exchange rates in the late 1940s to the launch of the Euro in 2002. It now stands at the center of efforts to build a new global financial and regulatory architecture, once again proving that it has the power to shape the financial rules of our world. Yet despite its pivotal role in the financial and political history of the last century and during the economic current crisis, the BIS has remained largely unknown until now.

What made the experience of listening to Tower of Basel the most enjoyable?

It's helpful to have read a few books on the economic time between the world wars. A good one would be Lords of Finance. It's shocking then, how important the BIS actually is, and how little one knows about history and objectives of this organization.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Tower of Basel?

When I realized, that I stumbled over a really interesting book, and that my fear to have bought some absurd conspiracy theory was not relevant... The subtitle of the book somehow made it sound to me, like this may have also been a really odd read, but then it was a great account of the history of the BIS and actually, 'shadowy history' and 'runs the world' seem not to be far fetched in retrospect...

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I felt intrigued. I was born in Germany and was surprised and shocked about the conduct of the bank during WWII.

Better editing if th contnts. The book comes with an amazing storyline but its been written and narrated in rather boring and dull fashion. Its more like a 'here r the facts... But the ' stroytelling' element is missing.

Would you ever listen to anything by Adam LeBor again?

Perhaps but wdnt look forward for a new book like i wd do for micheal lewis.

A very captivating topic - for the book but neither the writing nor the reader cud manage to make it a compelling and gripping. Me half heard during 4 hr driving, but that aas 4 weeks back... I still drive but listning diff books..:( what a shame

The past history was designed by honest ambition but had terrible mistakes to supporting the Nazis from the director, it also shows the fallibility of a republic powerful institution to the need of being more democratic, open and transparent w/ freedom of information in transactions etc.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Ashwin

17/09/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"well written amd important book about the BIS"

excellent content and research has been used in this book. narrator could have avoided the various accents tho', otherwise superb narration.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

James B Wirth

02/09/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Optional Required Heading"

Well worth reading. Read with The Federal Reserve Conspiracy by Anthony Sutton. Language accents not helpful.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Dave Wood

03/07/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Too much opinion"

A great read and very informative. A drawback was the all the commentary regarding social consciousness. The author also addresses this bank at times as if it were a typical corporate entity.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Richard J. Peach

Boston

22/12/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Eye Opening"

What did you love best about Tower of Basel?

Just the overall conspiracy of the banking cartel.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

Just very well read on a difficult topic

Which character – as performed by John Mawson – was your favorite?

Not really applicable here

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

"The Banking Masters Who Control the World"

Any additional comments?

Very interesting, not an easy read, lots of banking terms info etc. but something everyone needs to know and wake up to.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Glen

Columbus, OH, United States

01/11/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Amazing story"

Would you listen to Tower of Basel again? Why?

Not sure I would listen to it again, but I learned a lot and highly recommend it to anyone who believes that there are important global impact things at work in the world that are kept from us and that there are plans for the future of the planet and all of the people living here being created by people outside of our reach and without our knowledge. There are secret bankers who control the world economy and the book introduces you to them and explains the history of the bank and the people who created it and have run it for decades.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

That there are actually a group of "secret" bankers that make a lot of world economic policy.

What about John Mawson’s performance did you like?

Very good job of matching the tone of his voice to the events as they unfold in the book.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

When the American banker started helping the Nazi's.

Any additional comments?

In some ways, there is nothing surprising about this book because I believed this group existed. But my beliefs felt like conspiracy theories. Now I know this group of people exist and we know their names. It was like finding out that there are two people who work at the FBI named Mulder and Scully.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

C

beverly hills, CA, USA

13/07/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Why is the narrator putting on different accents?"

Would you consider the audio edition of Tower of Basel to be better than the print version?

Whose idea was that?

This is not a novel or a play. It's annoying and unecessary to have him put on French, German and US accents. Will he talk like a woman if quoting one?

What didn’t you like about John Mawson’s performance?

It is not him, it's the moron who told him him to put on different accents. His normal voice is great.

Any additional comments?

Good book so far, aprt from the idiotic accent idea.

0 of 3 people found this review helpful

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.